communicating this information to the Royal Society:--

"The Captain is the first man I ever heard of that took notice of a Red
Streak of Light preceding the Emersion of the Sun's body from a total
Eclipse. And I take notice of it to you because it infers that _the Moon
has an atmosphere_; and its short continuance of only six or seven
seconds of time, tells us that _its height is not more than the five or
six hundredth part of her diameter_."

What a change has since come over the ideas of men! The sun has proved a
veritable mine of discovery, while the moon has yielded up nothing new.

The eclipse of 1715, the first total at London since that of 878, was
observed by the famous astronomer, Edmund Halley, from the rooms of the
Royal Society, then in Crane Court, Fleet Street. On this occasion both
the corona and a red projection were noted. Halley further makes
allusion to that curious phenomenon, which later on became celebrated
under the name of "Baily's beads." It was also on the occasion of this
eclipse that the _earliest recorded drawings of the corona_ were made.
Cambridge happened to be within the track of totality; and a certain
Professor Cotes of that University, who is responsible for one of the
drawings in question, forwarded them to Sir Isaac Newton together with a
letter describing his observations.

In 1724 there occurred an eclipse, the total phase of which was visible
from the south-west of England, but not from London. The weather was
unfavourable, and the eclipse consequently appears to have been seen by
only one person, a certain Dr. Stukeley, who observed it from Haraden
Hill near Salisbury Plain. This is the last eclipse of which the total
phase was seen in any part of England. The next will not be until June
29, 1927, and will be visible along a line across North Wales and
Lancashire. The discs of the sun and moon will just then be almost of
the same apparent size, and so totality will be of extremely short
duration; in fact only a few seconds. London itself will not see a
totality until the year 2151--a circumstance which need hardly distress
any of us personally!

It is only from the early part of the nineteenth century that serious
scientific attention to eclipses of the sun can be dated. An _annular_
eclipse, visible in 1836 in the south of Scotland, drew the careful
notice of Francis Baily of Jedburgh in Roxburghshire to that curious
phenomenon which we have already described, and which h